Make sure he finds a Union!

IBEW 👏🏾👏🏾

The better sort of YouTubers (the technical ones) are forever advising "get a trade". Doesn't matter what, electrician, plumber, whatever appeals. Just make sure the training course you sign up for is a good one, it should include going out on the tools with someone qualified as well as class work.

Great choice - you can make a good living, you are outsource-proof, AI-proof, and entering a profession that is going to be in high demand with limited supply of experienced people.

& if he ever wants to get higher education, he can pay for it himself & take classes over years-- there's no limit on how long you take to get a BA or BS degree. & we uni/community college teachers LOVE mature students! 👍

Yeah I did undergrad at a school with lots of nontraditional students and they all knew why they wanted to be there. It makes a real difference in how seriously they take the classes.

In Australia & Aotearoa/NZ many students take a gap year (or 2 or 3) & travel & work in Europe & Asia before going to uni. Of course, it helps that both countries have livable wages & citizens can get student work visas in Europe.

Many of the trades and unions will help a person continue education while on the job

My friends in law school who were in their 40s got the BEST jobs after we graduated.

I'm an alumna of a polytechnic, went on to grad school, and just came back to teach there. it always tickled me that my old appliance repair guy and I went to the same school. I also run into horticulture grads who work for the Parks Board.

Yeah one of my friends is an electrician and has been very happy with it for those reasons.

Yeah, about that. It turns out a decade of everyone saying "learn a trade" wasn't actually based on any real demand for the trades. It was just a line used by people who wanted to make university education seem bad.

Right now young men with college degrees have about the same rate of unemployment as those without and it’s in the high single digits, which is pretty bad.

Excellent decision. I took my students to a career fair last year. Starting salary for a bricklayer is higher than my teaching salary with 17 years of experience.

Adding to the commentary Sasquatch & others have put in already, the continuing rise of HEVs/fully electric vehicles, the rising interest in home solar, the need for home standby generators to provide power when the grid fails? It is a damn-near perfect career path to ensure they're always employed.